


What Do They Know About Friends?

by winchesters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Friendship, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 15:18:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchesters/pseuds/winchesters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>James, Sirius, Remus and Peter, living like crazy and falling apart and coming together again, in their best days. A Marauders' Era fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Do They Know About Friends?

**Author's Note:**

> I and "winchesters" (my lovely sister/coauthor) don't own Harry Potter, or any associated characters. Everything belongs to good old J.K.
> 
> (Also, the dialogue between James, Sirius, Lily and Snape belongs to Rowling—I used her words, not the character's actions!)

**Chapter One**   
  
**1971**

  
That night, the fight spilled out into the street. Mr. Pettigrew threw many punches, and his wife threw many in return; mostly, she was on the receiving end. Upstairs, in his dim bedroom, Peter held his Hogwarts letter tightly, in both hands.  
  
He’d known that this letter would come, someday, for him. For Peter, half-blood—he heard the term thrown around enough, by his father—the son of a mudblood and a wizard. He touched the parchment, tracing his fingers across the letters. King’s Cross Station.   
  
“You filthy mudblood _bitch_!” Screaming. Dad’s pulled out a wand before, right there on the street. Peter knows that another wizarding family once lived down on Bridge Road, but they moved away years ago. And now there’s only the Pettigrews, and the neighbors must think Dad crazy, throwing around words like _mudblood_ and _The Ministry_.   
  
Someone screams again. A yell in return; a threat to phone the police if this keeps up. A lawnmower starts up, rattling in the evening quiet.  
  
Peter stares hard at his letter. He cannot bloody _wait_ to get on that damned train.

* * *

  
“Just try to be good.” Diana Potter presses a damp kiss to her son’s cheek, watches as he swipes the lipstick smudge away. Platform nine and three-quarters whirls around them, mad with color and drifting smoke and parents bidding their children goodbye.  
  
“ _Mum_.”  
  
“Alright.” She leans into her husband’s shoulder, blinking away sudden tears—happiness, she reminds herself, and pride—as James shoves heartily at his laden cart, inching away from them and towards a future. His future. “Alright.”  
  
“He’ll be fine.” Anthony says, reassuringly, she thinks. “Just as we were. Raise hell. You know.”  
  
“Oh, I’m certain.”  
  
James scrubs at the stubborn lipstick stain as his trunk—it belonged to his father, once—is loaded onto the train. His surely owl, Bart, watches grimly from a metal cage.  
  
“I’ll find you later, Bart.” James pokes his fingers between the iron slats. Bart pecks at him, then retreats to a corner. “I promise.”  
  
He shoulders his way through the maddening crowd, pushing onto the train. A whistle shrieks.   
  
“Shit!” Two older girls scramble past, probably racing towards a compartment. James makes his way from carriage to carriage, peering through dozens of glass doors. Students laughing, unpacking wizarding food from knapsacks and suitcases, fooling around, grinning madly at each other...  
Blessedly, he finds an empty carriage, pushes the door open. There is a worn backpack on the seat, a battered leather suitcase. Maybe someone’s forgotten them.  
  
James reclines in his seat, fooling around aimlessly with his wand although he doesn't know any real spells (yet). He is beginning to suspect that he’s going to be friendless for at least a day, which, while mildly irking is likely no cause for concern. In primary school he learned—quickly enough—the fine art of acting popular, of picking on someone else lower down than you. That way, there was always someone lower on the ladder, some scapegoat to fall back on.  
  
The door slides open suddenly, almost violently. A handsome dark-featured youth stands in the doorway. He wears a worn jacket, tight jeans.  
  
“The hell are you doing here?”  
  
“Thought this carriage was empty.”  
  
“Obviously not.” The boy jerks his head towards the suitcase. “Well, no harm, no foul. All fair’s in Quidditch, eh?”  
  
“You play?” James sits up straighter; with any luck, this boy will share his thirst for the game.  
  
“Quidditch? Bloody hell, no. It’s alright when you’re watching it, I guess. My name’s Sirius. Sirius Black.” He extends his hand. James shakes it vigorously. “You’re a first-year, aren’t you?”  
  
“James Potter. And aren’t you?”  
  
"Yeah." Sirius sits down opposite James, lounging with his eyes fixed on the dusty window. They make small talk and James is thinking of a tactful way to ask about Houses and sorting when the door slides open again and his world lurches sideways.

Red hair, the color of fallen autumn leaves, a thin freckled face. Eyes brightly, brilliantly, green.

"Could we sit here?" She smiles. Her teeth are straight and white. 

"Yeah, of course." He moves over, even though there's already an entire bench vacant. 

"Thanks." She turns over her shoulder. "Sev, I found a carriage!"

A sallow dark-haired follows her inside.

James and Sirius exchange smirking glances. They know, instinctively, that this boy—Severus Snape, they will learn. Sev, to Lily—is a target. 

Introductions are made. James feels Lily's name solid in his mouth. Lily Evans. 

The talk turns to Houses; if James is shocked to learn that Sirius' entire family are Slytherins, he is deign to show it. He hopes fervently that Lily Evans is sorted into Gryffindor. 

* * *

"...where dwell the brave at heart!" James mimes lifting and swinging a sword. "Like my dad."

Beside Sirius, Snape lets out a derisive snort. Almost without thinking, James turns to glare at the pallid boy.

"Got a problem with that?" He almost adds  _Snivellus_ , an admittedly cruel nickname first slung in Snap's direction by Sirius only minutes ago. _  
_

"No. If you'd rather be _brawny_ than  _brainy_..." The corners of Snape's mouth twist into a sneer. 

Sirius folds his arms. "Where're you hoping to go, seeing as you're neither?"

James breaks into uproarious laughter; Lily sits upright, color rising in her cheeks. She looks from James to Sirius and back again, something close to disgust lurid in her eyes. 

"Come on, Severus, let's find another compartment." 

James feels as though he's been stabbed with a branding iron, but he and Sirius mimick her heartily as she and Snape pass. James throws his foot out, tries to trip the awkward, sullen youth. 

As the compartment door slams, rattling the glass, Sirius shouts,

"See ya, Snivellus!" 

* * *

"...and so I say, well, mate, you better put a stopper on it, because here she comes now!”  
  
“No!” James laughs, loudly, with abandon, until his chest hurts.  
  
“It’s true! I swear on my family name! Which isn’t saying much, come to think of it...” Sirius flicks his wand. A spray of sparks, red and green, go out from the end and flash brilliant against the afternoon sunlight.   
  
A figure appears in the doorway, knocks lightly on the glass. James glances up. A lanky boy already dressed in too-short robes raises one hand and waves awkwardly.  
  
He slides the door open a few inches. “Hello. Could I come in? All the other carriages are full up.”  
  
James and Sirius look at each other. It’s a good feeling, James thinks. Having someone to look at, to decide and confer with.   
  
“Alright.” He moves his jacket off the seat. “What’s your name?”  
  
“Remus.” Smiling gamely, he sits down. He's good-looking in the way of awkward pre-teenagers; James notices two thin white scars crossing his cheek, trailing down his neck. His brown hair is shoulder-length, disheveled. He's got kind eyes, warm eyes.   
  


"I'm Sirius Black, and this here is James Potter." Sirius says, with a certain measure of pompous pride. 

"Nice to meet you." 

They shake hands awkwardly. It's established that Remus comes from a small town in the east of England, near Bristol.

"I used to live up north, near the border, but we moved when I was young."

"Mum and Dad get a divorce?" Sirius flips a Sickle between his pale fingers. 

"No. Why?"

"Just wondering. I live in London, you know." He tosses the coin high, catches it deftly.

"You should try out for the Quidditch team," James jokes. "Seeker, maybe?"

"Only if you go out for Griffyndor."

"Maybe I will." 

Sirius flicks the coin towards James, who catches it easily. They smirk at each other for a moment, mockingly, and then break into laughter.

"Hey, Remus," Sirius tosses the Sickle towards the disheveled boy, who ducks away at the last moment. "What House do you think you'll be sorted into?"

"I don't know." A worried look crosses Remus' face. "Maybe Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw. I like to read, I like school, so..."

"What House do you  _want_ to be sorted into?" James asks.

"Gyffindor." Remus says at once. "But they say that when you get sorted—it's...funny, I dunno." He looks embarrassed, fishes around in his backpack and withdraws a leather-bound book.

" _Defense Against the Dark Arts_." James reads the title aloud. "Little light reading, huh?"

"I like the subject." Remus says, smiling sheepishly. And James looks around the warm sunlit carriage, at these two boys and yes, they're all awkward and acting stupid and in later years, they'll look back on this with fondness and maybe cringe at the things they said and did, but for now they are together, and they are friends.

And later Sirius and James will be sorted into Gryffindor (Sirius having broken a long-standing Black family tradition) and Remus Lupin will find himself joining them, surprised but not-so-secretly thrilled. And classes will begin, and they will learn spells and potions and how to fend off vampires. And one day Lupin will introduce them to Peter Pettigrew, a short, stocky fair-haired boy who seems awestruck around James and Sirius. And they will pull pranks and run from teachers and raise all hell in the castle.

And they will be happy. My god, will they be happy. 

* * *

 

**1973**

**  
**"A _what_?" James allows a disbelieving laugh.

"I'm sorry." Remus clenches his hands, almost delirious with nerves. "I should have told you sooner. I thought it might be obvious, but..."

And of course he won't tell them how much he hates this—this part of himself—how many times during the transformations that he has wished for death, rather than this horror. 

Autumn sunlight slants through the beech tree's branches, gilds the lake in silver and gold.

Peter, tearing up a handful of grass, says, "Are you going to hurt us?"

"Shut up, Pettigrew." James casts him a sidelong stare, hard and cold. "Mate, I think it's brilliant."

"Me too." Sirius punches Remus' shoulder, fakes a loud howl. "You should tell everyone. You'd be real popular with the ladies—a  _beast_ in bed, get it?"

"No!" Remus cries, almost automatically. "You can't tell anyone. Swear to it, please. No one can know. No one."

"Your secret's safe with us." James vows. " _All_ of us."

Remus notices that he looks at Peter out of the corner of his eye.

"Yeah," Sirius says, sternly. Quietly. He means it. "All of us."

* * *

And trains come and go, and there are holidays when Sirius and Remus don't go home, and holidays that they all spend at the Potter's house, and they fight about stupid, petty things, and apologize and once halfway through their second year, James and Sirius have a knock-down, drag-out fight in the Common Room, and when two days later they apologize to each other—with Remus mediating using information learned from a library book—Sirius  _maybe_ sheds a tear or two but James and Remus pretend not to have seen him cry.

James goes out for the Quidditch team and becomes Seeker and Sirius laughs when he puts the uniform on but then admits that yeah, he cleans up nice in it, and they fail tests and ace tests, and stay up until unholy hours writing essays and studying the stars.

And, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, they become a family. 

 


End file.
